Jeremy Cohen (Tel Aviv University). Jeremy Cohen is the Spiegel Family Foundation Professor for
European Jewish History, and the former Director of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research
Center, at Tel Aviv University. Over the years, his research and publications have
focused on various aspects of the multi-faceted interaction between Judaism and Christianity
in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. On the one hand, he has treated the development
of Christian anti-Judaism and Jewish-Christian polemic, as in his The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (1982) and in his edited collection, Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the
Reformation (1991). On the other hand, his publications have investigated the ambivalence and
nuance that pervade Christian perceptions of the Jews, as in his Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (1999), and his edited collection, From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought (1996). The complexities of this ambivalence are compounded in the numerous traditions
and ideas shared by the two European religions; some of these Cohen has explored in
his “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth an Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career
of a Biblical Text (1989), and his latest work, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (2005). His current research concerns the role of the Jews in Christian expectations
of the End of Days. His most recent work is Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen (2007). Cohen’s books have won three National Jewish Book Awards, as well as prizes
from the American Catholic Historical Association, the Ohio Academy of History, and
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.